Christina Aguilera isn’t playing this era! The vocal queen returned this morning (May 3) with “Accelerate,” the lead single from Liberation and it’s a sexy bop with two hip-hop features. That track sets the tone for the rest of the album according to the 37-year-old’s Billboard cover story. “It bends more toward R&B and hip-hop than any of her previous efforts,” is how the writer described the opus, before listing Anderson .Paak and Kanye West as key collaborators.

The latter produced two songs including “Accelerate” and “Maria,” which apparently includes a Michael Jackson sample as well as a snippet from The Sound of Music. (The mind boggles). “I’ve always been a huge fan of Kanye,” Christina says in the interview. “Outside of, you know, his controversial aspects, I just think he’s a great artist and musicmaker and beatmaker. The artists that he chooses to pluck from different walks of life are so interesting.” It should be noted that those songs were recorded way back in 2016, well before his current woes.

So why the new direction? “To me, there’s nothing like an amazing hip-hop beat,” Legend X muses. “At the end of the day, I am a soul singer,” she continues. “When you strip back the words ‘pop star’ and the many things that I’ve done, singing soulfully is where my core, my root and my heart really is. And as you can see, it’s what I’m inspired by.” The interview also reveals that Julia Michaels wrote a song for the album and covers Christina’s reconciliation with Pink. Read the full interview here.

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